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Key takeaways

  • Mad Cool 2026 runs Wednesday July 8 to Saturday July 11 at Iberdrola Music in Villaverde, with reported capacity around 50,000-plus people a day for its tenth anniversary.
  • The default route is Metro Line 3 to Villaverde Alto, then a 15 to 20 minute walk. From the south, Line 12 (MetroSur) connects with Line 3 at El Casar.
  • The final July 6 CRTM plan provided special Metro, EMT and Cercanías return services, with an earlier finish on Wednesday’s festival night.

Mad Cool is a very good festival with one genuinely hard problem, and it is not the line-up. It is geography. The festival lives at Iberdrola Music in Villaverde, the city's far south-west industrial edge, a part of Madrid most expats have never had a reason to visit. Get the transport right and the night is easy. Get it wrong and you spend the headliner's encore calculating whether you will make the last train.

The 2026 edition is the tenth anniversary and it runs Wednesday July 8 to Saturday July 11. Reported capacity is around 50,000-plus people a day, which is the festival's deliberate trade-off: smaller than the megafestivals, less crushed, better sightlines - and still tens of thousands of people all trying to leave one industrial estate at the same time. This guide is about winning that fight.

The line-up, briefly, so you know which night you are solving for

You are almost certainly here for the music, so the quick version:

  • Wednesday July 8 - Foo Fighters headline, with Moby, The War On Drugs, and Wolf Alice.
  • Thursday July 9 - Florence + The Machine and Lorde.
  • Friday July 10 - Twenty One Pilots and Kings of Leon.
  • Saturday July 11 - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds close it out.

Across the weekend you also get Pulp, Halsey, Pixies, The Black Crowes, David Byrne, Jennie, The Last Dinner Party and Teddy Swims, plus an electronic strand from Thursday with Richie Hawtin, Nina Kraviz, Boys Noize, Polo & Pan and Weval.

Gates and first sets start in the late afternoon - in recent years around 17:30 to dodge the worst of the heat - and the main stages run past midnight. Check madcoolfestival.es/horarios for the exact clashes once the stage splits are published, because the schedule, not the map, decides what time you are fighting the exit crowd.

Getting there: Metro Line 3 is the answer

The single most useful fact about Mad Cool: take Metro Line 3 to Villaverde Alto, then walk. It is a flat 15 to 20 minute walk to the venue, signposted and full of other people going the same way, with the signed approach worth checking before departure. Line 3 runs straight up the spine of the city through Sol, Lavapies (Embajadores) and Legazpi, so from almost anywhere central it is one train and no changes.

That is the route. Everything else is a variation on it.

Coming from the south? If you live in Getafe, Leganes or anywhere on the MetroSur ring, you do not need to go into the centre and back out. Line 12 (MetroSur) connects with Line 3 at El Casar, one stop beyond Villaverde Alto, which is a much shorter trip than doubling back through Sol.

Cercanias is the third option. Line C4 stops at Villaverde Alto and line C3 at San Cristobal Industrial - useful if you are coming from out of town or along a Cercanias corridor rather than the metro.

EMT buses L22 and L79 both run Legazpi to Villaverde Alto if the metro is down or you just prefer a seat.

What there is not, in recent editions, is an official shuttle that drops you at the gate on the way in. Inbound, the plan is metro to Villaverde Alto and walk. Budget the walk into your arrival time, especially if you want to catch an early set.

The published 2026 return plan

The CRTM notice of July 6 supplied the final transport details after this guide’s original June edition:

  • Metro’s Villaverde Alto–Sol shuttle ran from 01:30 until 03:00 on Wednesday’s festival night, and until 03:30 Thursday–Saturday, with exits at Legazpi and Embajadores.
  • EMT’s Villaverde Alto–Atocha shuttle, with a Legazpi stop, ran 00:30–03:00 Wednesday and 01:30–03:30 Thursday–Saturday.
  • Cercanías’ nonstop Villaverde Alto–Atocha shuttle used the same windows as EMT.

These are the 2026 arrangements, not current late-night services. The original version used earlier-edition patterns; this dated clarification replaces those estimates.

Street closures and driving (don't)

If you were thinking of driving, reconsider. In recent editions, several Villaverde streets around the venue - Laguna Dalga, San Eustaquio, Resina and others - close partially or fully from around 15:00 each festival day, and exit 7 of the M-45 gets periodic blocks. Private cars get pushed to park on side streets like Acebeda and San Ezequiel, then you join the same midnight exit jam as everyone else, except now you are also looking for your car.

Public transport avoids the venue’s road restrictions and the need to retrieve a parked car after the show.

Main tradeoffs

  • The festival is excellent but the site is genuinely far from the centre. The journey is the price of admission, and the worst moment is always the exit, not the entrance.
  • Transport timings here follow the established Mad Cool pattern. The official 2026 mobility details are published close to the dates, so confirm exact shuttle and metro hours before each night.

Sources

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